How leaders navigate a crisis — big or small — has an enormous influence over the impact that crisis will have on their organization, not to mention the personal impact it will have on the people and leadership of that organization, in its aftermath. The pandemic — a crisis on a global scale — created a series of smaller crises for organizations worldwide. Some floundered at this immediate disruption. Others emerged more resilient than before.
In a Crisis, Great Leaders Prioritize Listening
Since 2020, leaders have had to navigate large changes and crises whose effects, especially without proper crisis leadership, are still being felt today. How did those that managed to succeed during this time do it? The authors argue that effective crisis leadership involves gaining perspective in uncertain times by listening to others. They offer three questions leaders can ask themselves to widen their perspective with input from a variety of other people: 1) Do you currently have access to diverse voices and sources of information within your team or organization, or even beyond its boundaries?, 2) Do you routinely build other team members’ ideas or feedback into your decision-making?, and 3) What systems or processes might you need to put into place to surface and capture multi-stakeholder perspectives?